


Endure

by LeoOtherLands



Series: All the Broken Pieces [19]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Lost Love, M/M, Mild Smut, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:46:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23520283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoOtherLands/pseuds/LeoOtherLands
Summary: Itachi lost his love long ago, but Shisui has never really gone.
Relationships: Uchiha Itachi/Uchiha Madara, Uchiha Itachi/Uchiha Shisui
Series: All the Broken Pieces [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1386661
Comments: 14
Kudos: 17





	Endure

**Author's Note:**

> And you  
> Can bring me to my knees  
> Again
> 
> All the times  
> That I could beg you please  
> In vain
> 
> All the times  
> That I felt insecure  
> For you
> 
> And I leave  
> My burdens at the door
> 
> But I'm on the outside  
> I'm looking in  
> I can see through you  
> See your true colors  
> 'Cause inside you're ugly  
> You're ugly like me  
> I can see through you  
> See to the real you
> 
> All the times  
> That I felt like this won't end  
> It's for you
> 
> And I taste  
> What I could never have  
> It was from you
> 
> All those times  
> That I cry my intentions  
> Full of pride  
> But I waste  
> More time than anyone
> 
> But I'm on the outside  
> I'm looking in  
> I can see through you  
> See your true colors  
> 'Cause inside you're ugly  
> You're ugly like me  
> I can see through you  
> See to the real you
> 
> All the times  
> That I've cried  
> All that's wasted  
> It's all inside
> 
> And I feel all this pain  
> Stuffed it down  
> It's back again
> 
> And I lie  
> Here in bed  
> All alone  
> I can't mend
> 
> But I feel  
> Tomorrow will be okay
> 
> But I'm on the outside  
> I'm looking in  
> I can see through you  
> See your true colors  
> 'Cause inside you're ugly  
> You're ugly like me  
> I can see through you  
> See to the real you
> 
> [Outside - Aaron Lewis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxfu-O_e4P4)

I paced out into the garden, under the moonlight, like a man wading into the ocean. My bare feet whispered over the moss, the long hems of my sleeves and robe rustled and caught on thorns and grasping branches, as I ghosted my palms over the tops of rose bushes and between rows of lilac. The moon shine was a pale specter reflected in the crystal dampness standing in my eyes. Half blind with it all or not, my gait was steady, sure, disguising just how much it hurt to glide smoothly through the night with my ankle still swollen.

But grace had become my companion and gentle melancholy my familiar under the crushing years, and it hurt worse to be without them. Neither sadness nor great happiness were acceptable in Madara’s household, no more than sign of weakness or pain were permitted. Injury meant nothing. You must still walk straight.

And if your lord should strike you, you should not cry. And if your lord should paint you with bruises, that was his right and you should cover them with silk and powder and should wait upon his pleasure, without flinching from his hand. Whether that hand reached to stroke you, to caress you, or to do you harm.

That was life.

That was how it was.

And all the more so if you were your lord’s consort. The one who shared his bed and who he claimed over and over again, until you could not even feel you held ownership over yourself any longer.

No, you belonged to Madara and you did not show what laid cracks across your soul. Instead, you spent time alone at night, among the flowers. You sat there on the soft ground and you felt the tears you would not shed, and you wondered what it would be if you were dead.

It would be simpler, easier, a relief to sleep forever without worry of waking. A heaven to find only oblivion after death, and not the gilded halls of some paradise. Perhaps even the fires of some perdition you were condemned to for such treasonous thoughts against your lord as you harbored would be preferable to continued life.

_Oh, Itachi._

The words were as familiar to me as the feel of ghostly satin and insubstantial arms draping me and coming around me from behind. The warmth nuzzling into my neck and laying along my back left me sobbing. Weeping without tears in the quiet night. As much because I knew it wasn’t real as because this spirit had been with me always and I _knew_ it was real.

“Shisui.”

_You can’t die, Itachi._

The cool words were accompanied by soft, formless hands sliding down my gut and over my thighs, moving them apart, even as I gasped. They were still sensitive from the dark marks Madara had left there, but my phantom was kind and he knew me like no other. His touch was the first I had ever known, and it had memorized me over countless dozing, distant days full of afternoon’s half-light.

“Please.” I begged into the night. “Oh, please. Shisui!”

_Shhhh… I have you, Blackbird._

And he did, he always did. Unreal, yet, oh so real, lips glided down my neck, making my head tilt back, and those hands moved between my thighs, eliciting them to tremble in anticipation of what I knew was coming. A warm tongue, that didn’t exist, slid up my neck to the hollow behind my ear, and firm hands moved up my inner legs, bunching the fabric of the long robe I wore, wrinkling it, but who cared? Those hands were dear and the palms hot on my skin. I was panting when they finally met me, one grasping my hardening shaft and the other dipping down lower, to work me open.

I must have looked a wanton thing, there in the night. Alone, but for the one who lived on in my mind and heart, back straining, legs shivering, member leaking shimmering droplets onto the green moss. But I didn’t care and there was no one to see me. Shisui’s fingers stretched open my most secret place and pressed against that thing so far in me I could never find it on my own. I doubled over my raised and spread legs, while he hushed me, smiling at my moans and nibbling my ear, breath hot on the side of my face, though the dead do not breathe.

_My Itachi… You can’t come join me yet._

“But why, please, Shisui. Ahhh! Please.”

Was I pleading for release or release? I could not tell. I did not want to tell. I wanted to come on the ground and wanted the feel of him and I wanted so much I did not know how I could go on. My dearest knew it and lowered his lips to trace teeth and mouth and tongue along my shoulder he bared with a nudge of his chin on my loose clothes. And his hands, those skilled and pale things of memory and desire, lifted me by the hips to settle me into his lap, onto him, even as we both half-knelt, half-sat there.

I cried out at it, the way I spread open around him, my spine bowing outward, but there was no escape and I wanted none. His hands did not release me. One held my hip in a grinding grip and the other moved soft on my aching part, stroking agonizingly to the motion of his careful thrusts. It hurt, but in the way longing hurt, until it was fulfilled. The way wanting ripped your heart, until something stopped it, or killed the beating of that offending muscle in your chest.

With a keening sound, I came and fell to my knees and then back unto my hunches. The faraway sensation of arms around me pulled back, rolled up like mist, and I bit into my lip, wrapping my face in the crook of my arm.

“Don’t go. Please, not again.”

_I’ve… never left you, Blackbird. And I’ve always been gone._

_Live._

_Do that for the both of us, now._

_Please. Find a way._

Before the tears I felt stinging in the back of my eyes could fall or stain my cheeks, I put a stop to them, feeling them drop away from me like the dissolving of the phantom that clung to me. My love, my lover, my lost one.

“Please don’t go.”

It was a final, fleeting request.

But he had been gone for years now and I was alone, and I belonged to Madara and all I could do was endure.

Cohere.

Like the rocks and stones, which upheld the earth itself.

Bear up under it all.

And live.

Just one more day.

Just… one more.

**Author's Note:**

> This salty ball of angst and glitter is an original fiction author and fan fiction writer, who literally lives for comments and reader interaction. Even if this is nothing but inarticulate vowel screams, lol. He exist on a flotilla of social media, separated into a wide array writery things.
> 
> If you are crazy enough to want to see what I'm writing on any given day, and maybe try tempting me into writing something specific, feel free to join me in my personal writing Discord [Midway](https://discord.gg/jsQw96p), or friend me on Discord at LeoOtherland#7066 if you would rather chat one on one.
> 
> On Facebook I can be located on my [author page](https://www.facebook.com/LeoOtherland/) for all things original fiction, or in the [AO3 Armada group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/601270063618951) for all things fan fiction.
> 
> On [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoseOfOtherLand) or [Tumbler](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/leootherlands) I primarily run with the fan fiction crowd and I seldom post and/or tweet anything, but if you want to drop me a line, I am always up for a chat.


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